Tuesday, December 15, 2009

What's the worst crime you can commit? Murder? Embezzlement? Burglary? These are all felonies and carry high jail times, but I think the worst crime where there is an actually victim is rape. No other crimes put nearly as much of an emotional or physical strain on the victims. Shouldn't we show a little more Respect for Rape Victims?

Sexual assault is a very heinous crime. Rape kits are easy to acquire from the victim--though it is an extremely intrusive process--and even easy to test. You acquire the sample and you test the DNA. Simple as that. Right? Not according to "the long arm of the law." In 18 percent of the nations open, unsolved cases, no forensics evidence has even been submitted to a crime lab. Now that is pretty outrageous.

One out of every six women will be sexual assaulted in their lifetime with college age women being four times more likely to be victimized. Just think: A vast majority of the people in this world know someone that has been a victim of sexual assault. You may ask around the people you know and figure out that not a person knows an rape victims, but that doesn't mean that they don't know any victims. The more likely answer is that the victim just hasn't told anyone. 60 percent of the cases aren't even submitted by the victims themselves. Stunning isn't it?

Yes rape is an outrageous crime but what makes it worse is that 73 percent of victims know their assailants. Almost three out of four victims know who attacked them. Despite all of signs leading to sure fire conviction only 6 percent of the assailants ever do any jail time.

Shouldn't law enforcement at least show the respect for those victims who don't know their assailants and are actually courageous enough to come forward after such an event? Maybe we need to raise the numbers for the number of attackers who spend time in jail. We have the ability to protect the victims. Why don't we?